Catalina S.

When dealing with VCs in advanced stages of the fundraising, tech startups owners need to speak the VC language. ✯ Look for Term Sheets templates on the large European and US VCs websites and understand each clause. ✯Be flexible during the negotiations. ✯Ask questions about the main investment clauses. ✯Make sure you understand the difference between equity based investment vs SAFE vs convertible notes.

Business process optimisation becomes mandatory for a scalable company. In order to ensure cost effectiveness, an entrepreneur should seriously consider ERP, CRM, HR, Planning and budgeting solutions.Of course, it all depends on the industry to add new products such as SaaS based apps to improve collaborative working, document management, helpdesk management etc. The effective company digitalisation should follow a clear roadmap aligned with business growth goals, as a result of a digitalisation consulting report.

When building a startup pitch, the entrepreneur should think that business angels and investors put their money into a great team who managed to solve a problem with a unique and competitive solution. Having an experienced team of executives and outlining the main achievements in one slide should be among the top priorities of the pitch deck.

When choosing start-up consulting tools, I believe one should take feedback from other business owners. It is important to understand what tools are used in your industry, the benefits and limits from real users. Afterwards, take advantage of the well documented reviews from business forums and tools presentations from business and software events.

Having a long term vision for your startup is one of the keys to a successful fundraising. It's good to plan ahead the pre-seed, seed, Series A rounds timing, size, types of tools (convertible notes, equity etc) and make these information public as soon as one starts the fundraising process. This will transmit a strong message regarding the owners commitment to have a long term business approach.

The Term sheet has been assimilated in the early stage of the VCs ecosystem to a commercial binding offer, somehow non negotiable from the techstartups side. In the recent years, more VCs have placed their Term sheet proposal on their website and encourage the entrepreneurs to understand the investment clauses and address clarifications from the early stage of the negotiations with the VC.